I got my car teched today and they said both front wheel bearings are loose. I strongly suspect they are the original bearings at 170k miles... but everything feels OK to me, and I drive it every day. The DE is on Saturday.

I have 3 options.
1. Leave it alone and just ignore it until next week, or whenever.
2. Clean and repack with new grease, and retighten.
3. Replace all the bearings with all new parts.

I have two major concerns. I won't have time until Friday to do this job... if I start a job right before track day I might mess something up and the car won't be ready in time. Also, don't wheel bearings need to set, or seat, or break in? Would it actually be dangerous to do a DE on brand-new wheel bearings?

TIA.

 

In my experience, loose front wheel bearings are just that: loose.

They can be retightened in less than 20 minutes per side. Don't sweat this!

 

At a minimum, I would repack them and tighten them to spec. Take the car out and run it up and down the road and through some good corners, then check them for play again.

I check wheel play after every session at the track, on all the cars, and have installed many new bearings trackside with no break in.

 

You can definitely go ahead and track it with new bearings - no break in required. I would repack them as well before tightening, but if you take off the grease caps and they have plenty of goop in there, you'd probably be fine for this one day event to just tighten them. Usually they'll start to make some noise during turns or weaving back and forth on the highway before things become problematic.

 

You shouldn't track the 968, give it to me and track the benz. Yep.

 

You can have it. But there is no way on earth I am taking a diesel station wagon on Laguna Seca.


Thanks all for the tips. The dealer I was at getting my car teched sort of pressured me into ordering some new bearings right there. I want the parts just didn't want to pay dealer markup... oh well. I will open up the hub caps and see what's going on. If they look very greasy, I'll just readjust. If they're dry, I'll repack and readjust.

The wrench at the dealer told me it's not good to mix old grease with new. True?

 

If youre worried about it a couple cans of break cleaner and some elbow grease will clean them right up. Id go ahead and get some good synthetic grease to pack the bearing with, like redline.